Why Swindles and Swindlers Can Be Hard to Detect
You’d think on a Sunday I’d just be sitting back enjoying a truly pleasant, slightly chilly, day here in Las Vegas. But, truth be told, that is far from the truth. I’ve been working my buns off.
However, I did find something of real interest to anyone doing anything online or offline. If you get the Sunday paper, and read the Parade magazine, and follow Marilyn vos Savant, then you most likely already saw this… if not keep reading. (I’m going to paraphrase, but the message is the same.)
While there are loads of people out there only too willing to get rich quick, losing money to scammers may not always be your fault.
Turns out the con game played by (financial) swindlers is beyond devious, and the example given is for stock market swindles (but use your imagination and you’ll see how this could easily translate to just about anything online).
Person X tells and/or emails 1000 potential clients that a particular stock will go up on a given day. In the meantime, he or she is also telling 1000 OTHER people that the particular stock will go down.
He or she has a 50-50 chance of being right, so… once he/she determines which side “won” this person concentrates on that group. Digging around Person X comes up with another stock (or whatever) and hits the group of 1000 that “won.” But, the twist is this time, out of those 1000, he/she tells 500 this new stock is going up; while telling the remaining 500 it’s going down.
The more times he/she repeats this pattern, Person X eventually ends up with a list of people who will believe anything he/she tells them.
Unfortunately, in this case scenario, too often those on the “winning” (read lucky) side, often cough up their entire life savings thinking there is no way this person can be wrong.
The information is then summed up with this:
While this ruse isn’t a pyramid scheme, it does illustrate how easy it is to concoct ways to trick people by preying on their wishful thinking.
The long and short… back to what we continue to advise (and I was once told by a financial advisor) – making money or not is a 50-50 flip of a coin. You can do just as well as the “expert” in predicting what’s hot out there (online or off) as the next guy – if you’re willing to do your homework first.
Stay safe, be happy, enjoy your Sunday!
Related articles
- Whom Can You Trust With Your Money? (abcnews.go.com)
- Financial Scams On The Rise As Economic Suffering Spreads (huffingtonpost.com)
- Planning a Retirement Without Dividends (nytimes.com)
Tags: case scenario, con game, life savings, Marilyn vos Savant, money, parade magazine, pyramid scheme, ruse, scammers, stock market, sunday paper, swindlers, swindles, wishful thinking
April 26th, 2009 at 6:14 pm
I believe that the biggest problem right now is there are so many people that need something to believe in that they’ll be easy prey to scams. When you think about it even if you don’t have anything to worry about at the moment in your life financially, but you hear about a chance to make a extra buck or two without doing anything I’m afraid there’s a lot of us out there who would do it. This was a great post, and something to make us all think about.Have a great Sunday!
jj-momscashblogs last blog post..From a Coma to My Blog
April 26th, 2009 at 7:17 pm
What a crazy scam – but so very clever on behalf of the scammers. I never heard of this idea before but totally understand now how it works with the stock market. Thanks for opening my eyes!
Heather in Beautiful BCs last blog post..Adtech San Francisco 2009
April 27th, 2009 at 6:24 pm
@jj – strange, sounds exactly how the “guru” types (and not so guru types) filter now there mailing lists to buyers only.
April 27th, 2009 at 6:25 pm
@Heather – again the stock market would be the perfect opportunity, but my thinking at the time was outside the box. I’ve seen people follow some individuals online as if they were “god” (with a little g) that couldn’t put useful stuff together to save their lives. Yet they buy and buy….
April 29th, 2009 at 3:35 pm
When it comes to money, I do my own research…. I let the gamblers do the market…. I do the grocery store… with coupons.